The learning on corruption has exploded over the past two decades plus. Where once one scratched around for material on subjects like conflict of interest, the measurement of corruption, and whistleblower protection, a plethora of books, articles, reports, monographs, and, yes, even blog posts are available today on these and other once recondite topics. Great news for specialists and students. 

But bad news for those who aren’t. For policymakers, reporters, citizens, and other non-experts who need to know the basics about a corruption-related topic for a parliamentary debate, a story deadline or what-have-you but don’t have all day, or days, to read up on it.

Until recently they were at the mercy of an internet search engine. If they were lucky, one of the first entries that came up provided a useful summary of the learning. Or maybe it was misguided or out-of-date. Or, as now happens more frequently, maybe the search engine produced a hallucinogenic note, text generated by a large language model that sounds authoritative but the content of which is anything but.  

Now, thanks to two recent publications, the days of hoping a search engine or a LLM will provide a short, reliable introduction to a key corruption related concept are over.